Water flow and visibility question

[AVA]

I spent the day yesterday fishing a river that had questionable visibility. Pretty sure it had some rainfall about a week previous. The water flow was higher than usual. Some other rivers in the area were completely blown out. Visibility was about 1.5-2 feet, enough to see bottom in most places except corner pools and deeper runs. Water temp was 50 degrees. It was a mountain river, started fishing at about 7:30am and fished until noon. Tried numerous dries like stimulators and H&L’s, and also tried a handle full of different nymphs. Didn’t catch a thing. Didn’t see any rises. This is a river I’ve been to previously and done well with lots of beautiful holding water, and I’m pretty sure doesn’t see a lot of angling pressure. Would the current water conditions be the reason I got skunked or did I just get served humble soup regarding my fly fishing skills?

[thedonald]

We had similar conditions on Friday. It was quite cool first thing too. About noon some small fish started rising to drys and we did well for the rest of the day. The fish were finicky though, kind of hitting from the side, lots of looks but we only hooked about half. They were all in the feeding lanes and most were looking up, but not quite that aggressive take of prime dry fly fishing. I would say from now on it only gets better. Water level was a little high and probably cooler but I don't think we will get any summer closures as the air temps will start to drop in a couple weeks.

[scel]

Originally Posted by AVA

I spent the day yesterday fishing a river that had questionable visibility. Pretty sure it had some rainfall about a week previous. The water flow was higher than usual. Some other rivers in the area were completely blown out. Visibility was about 1.5-2 feet, enough to see bottom in most places except corner pools and deeper runs. Water temp was 50 degrees. It was a mountain river, started fishing at about 7:30am and fished until noon. Tried numerous dries like stimulators and H&L’s, and also tried a handle full of different nymphs. Didn’t catch a thing. Didn’t see any rises. This is a river I’ve been to previously and done well with lots of beautiful holding water, and I’m pretty sure doesn’t see a lot of angling pressure. Would the current water conditions be the reason I got skunked or did I just get served humble soup regarding my fly fishing skills?

The good news is changing water conditions do make fishing a little harder. The bad news is you still had a starter serving of humble soup. If you can blind catch stimmies and still catch fish, then you are accustomed to fly fishing on easy-mode. I am not judging---we all love blind-casting dries, but outside these conditions, we need to use our more technical skills to catch fish.

1.5-2' of visibility is definitely enough for trout to feed. 50F is cool, even for cutties. Brown trout will stay pretty low in the water column. The cooler temperatures mean slower metabolism and less overall energy. Fish will move for 2 things: an easy meal or a big ticket item.

In this case, with no obvious surface activity, deep nymphing is probably your best choice. The nymphs to choose are often not that relevant, but size is usually important. A stonefly and a small (sz16 or smaller) pairing. Personally, i would prospect with a smaller streamer through obvious tailouts and pools to find active fish. Once an active fish is located, then switch to more targetted techniques, like nymphing and/or dry/dropper.

Jensens recently made a video about it (I honestly did the prospecting before the video was released): https://youtu.be/gVWbl626ASI